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Julia Keller, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, is cultural critic at the Chicago Tribune. She joined the Tribune in late 1998.

Keller was born and raised in Huntington, W. Va. She earned a bachelor's and master's degree in English from Marshall University, and a doctoral degree, also in English, from Ohio State University. Her dissertation explored literary biography, focusing on biographies of Virginia Woolf.

She was a 1998 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In the fall of 2006, she was McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton University. Keller also is guest essayist on the PBS program "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer."

Her book, "Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It," will be published by Viking in May 2008.

Related "Julia Keller" Articles

Ackers Gap, W.Va. After my previous travels there, no encouragement was necessary for another excursion.
The town is more than merely a speck on an imaginary map, and it is a way to channel my former Chicago Tribune and Pulitzer Prize-winning colleague —...

It can't have been easy. Art supplies were not exactly thick on the ground in those days — we're talking 32,000 years ago, give or take — and there were lots of other things to worry about, such as finding food, water and shelter. Not mention outrunning...

Let the fireworks begin.
When talk turns to naming the Great American Novel — the upper-case designation is required by custom, if not by law — tempers tend to flare. Each time I approach the subject in a column, and display the shameless gall of...

He was a man in motion — the beautifully controlled fury of a great athlete.
How, though, to convey that energy and grit and grace on the flat page of a graphic novel? How to suggest the up-and-at-'em vigor of a Roberto Clemente in a venue that just sits...

When your 5-year-old daughter wants to play "I Spy" and says, "I spy with my little eye ..." and decides that her mystery object starts with a "B," and then she points to a bar — one of the iron bars on the door of a jail...

In celebration of July Fourth, Printers Row set out to create a reading list of patriotic books. But, how to define "patriotic"? We decided to have each contributing Tribune writer and editor pick a title that corresponds to his or her own...

It's time for the travel two-step: First, deciding where in the world you'd like to go for your summer vacation. Second, finding the perfect travel guide to accompany you. I've been known to stand in a bookstore aisle for long agonizing stretches, reading...

Take a beloved book, turn it into a film – and take cover, because the millions who adore the book will come out swinging. Their affection makes them protective. Love makes them loyal – and ready to punch anyone who messes with the object of their...

Henry James once opined that the two most beautiful words in the English language are "summer afternoon." I would like to edit James — alas, who wouldn't? — and bestow the most felicitous phrase award upon the words "summer...

Popcorn. Check.
Diet Coke. Check.
Twizzlers. Check.
A copy of "F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Short Autobiography" (Scribner), edited by James L. West III. Check.
If you're on your way to see — or see again — "Midnight in Paris," the...

An international business tycoon is in seriously hot water. He's accused of unspeakable crimes. He's about to lose everything — his business, his family, his reputation, even his freedom.
So far, it sounds like the Rupert Murdoch affair on steroids.
But...

Derring-do and deadly attacks are the elements that make his books bestsellers, but there's nothing Brad Thor likes better than sitting down with a good book.
The author, a Chicago native who still lives here, has simple advice for those who aspire to...

Nothing in life is certain anymore — not even death and taxes, thanks to cryonics and a Republican Congress. Thus I can't give you an absolute, ironclad, airtight guarantee that if you hold "The Magician King" (Viking) at just the right angle at...

"Grief," writes Thomas Lynch, "is the tax we pay on our attachments."
It is a beautiful line. It is simple and lovely and true. If you don't feel love, then you don't feel sorrow; to live without a close connection to another person...

Ideas are immortal, but the handy carrying cases in which they're toted around — i.e., books — are not. As proof, I offer my paperback edition of “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) by Virginia Woolf. Published by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1953, the book is in...

Leon Carroll, Jr., born and raised on Chicago's South Side, knows that the secret of "NCIS" is a simple one: Words.
The top-rated CBS drama about the real-life Naval Criminal Investigative Service is one of the best-written shows on television,...

When you regard an author as the best of her generation, and among the best of any generation, and you read just about everything she's ever written - which includes, in the case of Joyce Carol Oates, dozens and dozens of novels and short-story...

Just when you think you've got the guy's number, he turns around and confounds you, giving all the stereotypes about him a swift kick in the keister.
On Aug. 3, 2001, Mayor Richard Daley — he of the mangled syntax and truncated vocabulary, he of the...